I concur with Home Minister Hishammuddin Tun Hussein that the opposition (and let me add, Suaram too) were fabricating lies about the 300,000 stateless 'Malaysian Indians', and that they must produce tangible evidence to their claim.

In Putrajaya on Wednesday, about 400 'Malaysian Indians' and members of the opposition, led by PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng marched to the National Registration Department, confronted the police and the department's director-general Jariah Mohd Said.

Well. Hisham was right although KDN officers were caught off-guard during the demonstration. However, no untoward incident took place, the police personnel carried out their duty as prescribed.

While I agree with Hisham, I can't agree with the messy job of the NRD - which comes under his jurisdiction - in dealing with these stateless people. In casting doubt over the 300,000 stateless Indian (there is no logic in it), I personally regret that we don't have a specific guideline in issuing out PR and granting citizenship to foreigners.

This guy may have made a lot of noise about the stateless Indians but many Indian nationals were brought in to the country over the past 10 years as workers. By right, they must return to their country once their working permit expires but many of them chose to stay, just like the few millions Bangladeshis and Indonesians who now 'conquered' some areas in the country.

Yes, it is not our policy to grant them with PR status as they came here to work, and that is very, very clear!

My only concern is the plight of 'genuine' stateless Malaysians, people who were born in Malaysia, whose parents and siblings are Malaysian. The only problem is that, they don't have Mykad as their birth was not registered.

I have been throughout their country, including Sabah and Sarawak, conducting a study on the stateless people.

As most of them are in Sabah, the government made the right move to settle their problem with the appointment of the RCI (Royal Commission of Inquiry). But I personally believe RCI should cover the whole nation, and the 6 months duration given by PM Najib for the Commission to complete its finding is not sufficient (sorry to say).

The NRD must streamline the provisions and guidelines in processing applications for PR and citizenship, and have separate sections for application by foreigners and 'stateless Malaysians'. In most cases, they went through the same procedure, hence neglecting the urgency for the stateless Malaysians to have their application approved in a short time.

I have a case.

This is Rosli Ismail, 33, from Kedah. Among 4 brothers and sisters who are Malaysians, his birth was not registered due to some problems. Being the eldest in the family, he did go to primary and secondary schools in Kedah, married and have 2 little kids.

His only problem is, nobody would employ him for not having any identification. He had to undergo multiple hardship in having his Mykad application approved. The 'penghulu', the State Assemblyman and the rest of his family members had gone to the NRD office to proof that he is a 'valid' Malaysian but they refused him.

He has done it for more than 10 years now, and sometimes in March this year, the police nabbed him together with some illegal immigrants and handed him over to the Immigration Dept officers. They locked him up for 6 months at the Immigration Detention Depot in Pekan Nanas, Johor.

After being told of his plight, I went to see some Immigration officers and an MP to secure his release, 3 days before Hari Raya Aidilfitri. My mind was only focused on his little kids in Kedah.

This will not be the end to his sad episode. As the NRD officers in Putrajaya refused to take up his case, Rosli does not feel secured. At anytime, the black episode of being kept in Pekan Nanas among the 'true' illegal immigrants, would happen again.

So much of our 'Rakyat Didahulukan' slogan!

Where is our responsibility in dealing with cases like this? While we show generosity in offering Malaysian PR and citizenship to the Bosnians, Iraqis and other nationals, we can't even attend to our own nationals who deserve to have a Malaysian identity, the rights as Malaysians?

If we have about 500,000 of them - the genuine stateless Malaysians - we are already losing about 500,000 votes!

Maybe some of the blame should also go to them and their parents for not registering their birth but there are still people with less knowledge about the importance of having IDs, while some remote areas in our hinterland are still having logistic problems, with no proper roads and far from establishments.

There are many people like Rosli around, not only in Sabah and Sarawak but also in the Peninsula. We have to shoulder the sin for not helping them and forcing some of them to commit minor crimes like stealing in order to feed their family.

I don't know what else to say but I hope the Home Ministry, through the NRD could formulate a better approach in dealing with the problems. They are not foreigners... repeat... not foreigners.

If we can offer non-Malaysians our PR status, for instance a Singaporean actor whom we adore much without him having to apply (I am not sure if he is keen to have it), why not we look into this matter with a more open heart and clear conscience!

COMMENT I was once a member of a group of government servants forced to attend a Biro Tatanegara (BTN, or National Civics Bureau) "nationhood" course. This Orwellian department began life as a 'Youth Research Unit' in 1974, under the Youth Ministry. It was re-invented as the BTN in the Prime Minister's Department, under Dr Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister at the time.

Prime Minister Najib Adul Razak's overfed, flabby department bestowed the BTN with RM74 million of public money in 2009.

BTN has repaid taxpayers with racial slurs. Hamim Husin (left), a deputy director of the Federal Territory office of the BTN, called the Chinese 'si sepet' (slanted-eye) and the Indians 'si botol' (alcoholics) at an Umno meeting in September 2010. Hamim managed to alienate more than 30 percent of the nation's population in one breath.

Half a year earlier, in February 2010, Nasir Safar, a "special assistant" to Najib, was forced to resign after expressing his contempt for the non-Malay 'pendatang' or immigrants.

At a 1Malaysia event, Nasir called Malaysian Indians "beggars" and Malaysian Chinese "prostitutes". His half-crazed speech was blamed on brainwashing by the BTN. BTN officers must have been drinking too much of their own distillate of ethnic hatred. The BTN took a hammering in the press for its crude attempts at indoctrination. There were calls from the MCA , MIC and NGOs for the BTN to be dismantled, and to be packed away in the same musty drawers as the 'psy-ops' experts of China's Cultural Revolution or Stalin's Gulag Archipelago.

Since 2010, the BTN has improved somewhat: the widely reported insults against non-Malays as immigrants or 'pendatang' have been toned down. Non-Malays are no longer instructed to publicly announce they are 'pendatang'. Instead, they are invited to state, during group discussions, their dialect group and their ancestral homes in China or India, as a kind of confession of their 'pendatang' status.

'Bersih' is dirty

The previously routine racist attacks in BTN have largely been replaced by the tepid platitudes of 1Malaysia. But the BTN has not given up its staple diet of championing Malay supremacy, of lauding Umno, and of attacking PAS, PKR's Anwar Ibrahim and the DAP. The BTN continues to emphasise the so-called "unchangeable" articles in the federal constitution that protect the "special position" of the Malays (Article 153), the Malay Rulers, Islam as the religion of the nation and Malay as the national language.

Copies of the constitution are handed out, and BTN participants are warned repeatedly never to question these supposedly sacrosanct articles. We were reminded several times about the constitutional latitude afforded to the government of the day to impose constraints on individual liberties, such as freedom of speech and expression, in the name of "sedition" and "public order and morality". 'Bersih' is a dirty word. We were educated that the meaning of democracy was regular elections, not street rallies. Public demonstrations are clearly seen as a threat to Umno's monopoly on national power.Psy ops, BTN style

One evening, we were softened up initially by a lighthearted contest, performing patriotic songs. After the camaraderie and laughter of the competition, we were brought back to earth by a role-playing game, designed to remind us of the evils of colonialism. We were given strict instructions to remain silent, while being set a seemingly impossible task, trying to match up stones of different sizes. During the task, BTN facilitators pulled out several participants, apparently at random. These "detainees" had masking tape placed over their lips and strings tied loosely around their wrists, to mimic the senseless injustice of colonial rule. After 20 minutes, a few selected participants were allowed to speak, and then to release the "detainees" on the sidelines.After this pantomime liberation, we were told to gather in a crowd around one young man and shoulder him aloft, carrying a giant Malaysian flag while singing a happy patriotic song.

Finally, we were treated to a video - essentially a snuff film - aimed at traumatising participants, so that we would feel that Muslims and Malays are victims and therefore Malays must unite against the larger world.

There was a slide show of stomach-turning violence, depicting Iraqi and Palestinian children and women buried alive, bleeding from facial wounds, and butchered by American or Israeli soldiers. One photograph focussed on an American soldier's T-shirt, bearing the slogan 'Born to Kill'. A repulsive video was then played, showing religious violence among Muslim and Christian Malays in Ambon, including a scene of an attacker hacking a defenceless man with a machete, until a piece of his skull was partly detached, while policemen looked on.

These horrific scenes were interspersed with images of unidentified Malay protesters throwing stones and Bersih demonstrators picking up and hurling tear gas canisters. The final message of Malay unity was driven home using a tearful speech by former prime minister Mahathir, reminding us tremulously that the Malay "struggle" is not over. Several of us were in tears by this stage.

This post features some famous quotations on misogyny. I always wonder what goes on in the mind of a misogynist. Do share your thoughts.

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch." ― Bette Davis

"A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen." ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking." ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them." ― Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

"I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."

"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything." ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

"Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident." ― Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men

"If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women: they do not read them in a true light: they misapprehend them, both for good and evil: their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend." ― Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

"Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves." ― Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

"Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]?" ― Christine de Pizan, Der Sendbrief vom Liebesgott / The Letter of the God of Love

"Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it." ― Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans

"Everything in life is part of it. Nothing is off in its own corner, isolated from the rest. While on the surface this may seem self-evident, the favorite conceit of male culture is that experience can be fractured, literally its bones split, and that one can examine the splinters as if they were not part of the bone, or the bone as if it were not part of the body.

This conceit replicates in its values and methodology the sexual reductionism of the male and is derived from it. Everything is split apart: intellect from feeling and/or body. Some part substitutes for the whole and the whole is sacrificed to the part. So the scientist can work on bomb or virus, the artist on poem, the photographer on picture, with no appreciation of its meaning outside itself; and even reduce each of these things to an abstract element that is part of its composition and focus on that abstract element and nothing else -- literally attribute meaning to or discover meaning in nothing else.

In the mid-twentieth century, the post-Holocaust world, it is common for men to find meaning in nothing: nothing has meaning; Nothing is meaning. In prerevolutionary Russia, men strained to be nihilists; it took enormous effort. In this world, here and now, after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, after Vietnam, after Jonestown, men need not strain. Nihilism, like gravity, is a law of nature, male nature.

The men, of course, are tired. It has been an exhausting perioed of extermination and devastation, on a scale genuinely new, with new methods, new possibilities. Even when faced with the probable extinction of themselves at their own hand, men refuse to look at the whole, take all the causes and all the effects into account, perceive the intricate connections between the world they make and themselves. They are alienated, they say, from this world of pain and torment; they make romance out of this alienation so as to avoid taking responsibility for what they do and what they are.

Male dissociation from life is not new or particularly modern, but the scale and intensity of this disaffection are new. And in the midst of this Brave New World, how comforting and familiar it is to exercise passionate cruelty on women. The old-fashioned values still obtain. The world may end tomorrow, but tonight there is a rape -- a kiss, a fuck, a pat on the ass, a fist in the face. In the intimate world of men and women, there is no mid-twentieth century distinct from any other century.

There are only the old values, women there for the taking, the means of taking determined by the male. It is ancient and it is modern; it is feudal, capitalist, socialist; it is caveman and astronaut, agricultural and industrial, urban and rural. For men, the right to abuse women is elemental, the first principle, with no beginning unless one is willing to trace origins back to God and with no end plausibly in sight. For men, their right to control and abuse the bodies of women is the one comforting constant in a world rigged to blow up but they do not know when." ― Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women

I am sharing the following information that Angela sent me with good intentions. Being no health expert, I cannot verify if the contents are correct but would encourage everyone to read more on this topic. Have a nice day and live healthily.

Kids are proud to show off their poop—but most adults rarely glance inside the toilet bowl. But the truth is... ...Examining your poop is one of the best ways to find out what's really going on in your body.

So take this quick quiz to get the inside scoop on your poop!

Question #1:How long does it take you to have a bowel movement? [ ]Less than 60 seconds [ ]More than two minutes

Answer:Healthy bowel movements happen within 60 seconds of sitting on the toilet. The stool should easily come out without straining, grunting or any discomfort. It should have the consistency of toothpaste. If you have time to read a newspaper while sitting on the toilet—you probably have a problem with constipation or poor bowel health.

Answer: Healthy stool averages about four to six inches long and are shaped like a banana or a torpedo. Very narrow, pencil-shaped stool is a sign your colon walls are impacted or you have polyps or growths on the inside of your colon or rectum. This causes the stool to squeeze to get through. Stress can also create narrow stool. Hard, round or pellet-shaped stool is a possible sign of poor liver function, lack of exercise, dehydration or constipation.

Question #3:Is your stool accompanied by foul odor? [ ]Yes [ ]No

Answer:Gas or odor is a sign of a bacterial imbalance in your intestinal flora. The "bad" bacteria release foul-smelling gases and toxins that can cramp your colon and create embarrassing odors. You can eliminate this odor by removing debris and encrusted feces from the walls of your intestines and restoring the balance in your intestinal flora.

Answer: According to Mayo Clinic research, all shades of brown and even green are considered normal stool colors. And the foods you eat can affect the color of your stool. For example, beets, tomato juice, blueberries, popsicles and green leafy vegetables can affect your stool color. However, a distinct change in stool color can be a warning sign for health problems.

Yellow-colored stool indicates your food is moving too quickly through your digestive tract—as in the case of diarrhea. If stool is greasy or foul-smelling, it may indicate excess fat caused by bad absorption of nutrients. Green-colored stool means your food isn't properly being processed through your intestines.. As a result, bile isn't broken down—and gives your stool that green color. Green stool can also mean you're eating too much sugar, fruits and vegetables and not enough grains or salt. Gray or ashy colored stool indicates undigested fats or heavy use of prescription or over-the-counter drugs that contain aluminum hydroxide. It can also indicate a lack of bile in the stool that may be caused by a bile duct obstruction. Black stool is a serious warning sign for bleeding in the upper gastrointestinal tract—possibly the stomach. Bright red stool may indicate bleeding in the lower intestinal tract, possibly the large intestine or rectum. Hemorrhoids may also be the source of the bleeding.

NB> If your stool floats, it means that there is too much fats in your diet.

Question #5:

Do you pass gas while you're having a bowel movement or have you noticed air or bubbles in your stool? [ ]Yes [ ]No

Answer:Air or bubbles in stool can indicate an intestinal imbalance. Gas producing bacteria may be overgrowing and competing with the healthier flora in your gut. Please know this: A normal bowel movement happens within 60 seconds of sitting on the toilet. There should be no straining, pain, bleeding or foul odor accompanied with your bowel movements. And wiping afterwards should be easy and simple—using just one or two pieces of toilet paper! If that's not your experience in the bathroom—then you need to give your inntestines a thorough internal cleaning!

When your colon is in danger—it will do anything and everything to send out an S.O.S.for health! That means giving you "dragon breath" and "B.O."! If you notice strong body odor—especially under your armpits... ...Or if your friends shy away and frequently offer you breath mints— LISTEN to your colon—it's screaming for help! And INTESTINAL parasites can also trigger:

December has not been a good month. The month is not even half over and I've already learnt of the passing of three persons who are known to me.

One of them was a particularly nice lady that lived in the road behind my house. A friend of my aunt. Until about a year ago when her doctor warned her about walking too much, she had always accompanied my aunt on her daily walks to the market about a kilometre away. When she gave up walking, she reverted back to cycling. Still, they would sooner or late end up at the market's hawker stalls with others for their daily gossips. She died last week on Wednesday after a long bout of sickness. Three weeks as an in-patient of the Lam Wah Ee Hospital where the doctors and nurses could not do anything more with the ravaging cancer except to make her as comfortable as possible.

I've already written here earlier about the second person. In case you want to know more about Fang Ewe Churh, here is the link to that story.

And the third person? Coincidentally, he also died on the same day as Fang. However, he was in Bangkok when he passed away. Khoo Lai Seng had joined a group of Chung Ling alumni to the Thai capital for some sort of worldwide gathering when he was found dead in his hotel room. I was told that the night before, he was enjoying himself immensely at the official dinner and had gone around to take photographs with many of the guests there.

Lai Seng was my colleague at the defunct Ban Hin Lee Bank. He joined at a time when I was just about relinquishing my duties as the bank's statistics officer. He took over this function until he left Southern Bank or CIMB Bank for the al-Rajhi Bank. Still, wherever he went, he looked after his employer's banking statistics reports. It was rather momentous that soon after he took over from me, Bank Negara had begun computerising the submission of BNM statistics. Lai Seng plunged into this project with great gusto and under his care, the pain of consolidating all the branch returns manually were consigned to the dump.

I last met him in Penang earlier this year at the gathering of former Ban Hin Lee Bank colleagues. Everyone had looked older and greyer but the familiar laughters were still ringing round the dining ballroom. Lai Seng, as he moved around the hall, still had that big smile for friends and the peculiar laugh that endeared him to his former colleagues during the banking days. He was forever cheerful and come to think of it, I haven't heard of anyone ever commenting that they had seen a serious side to Lai Seng except when he was concentrating over his beloved numbers. Even when he couldn't balance his statistics, he could laugh it away. Away from his Excel worksheets, he was the faithful manager of the BHLB netball team for many years.

Well, I can safely say that Lai Seng will be greatly missed by his friends when we former BHLB colleagues meet again next April for another reunion.

I agree with you ဧရာဝတီသား who wrote in The Voice Weekly.. Now it is seemed as Thein Sein is just a puppet as a PR personality to lie the world and people of Myanmar so that Military could rule and exploit Myanmar forever.

U Thein Sein should just copy the FORMER Senior General U Than Shwe in arresting Ne Win, Khin Nyunt and removing Saw Mg…If he and good Generals combined and remove the hardliners from Military and gov, Daw Suu led NLD and ALL the people of Myanmar including Ethnic Minorities would support him. Myanmar could progress, prosper and peaceful…Do it Mr President arrest the HARDLINERS immediately.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's future could suffer as its students continue to score low in key subjects of science and mathematics, a situation the opposition blames on the government's refusal to deal with its weak education policies hands on.

The latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2011 survey published online showed Malaysia scoring 440 points in Form Two mathematics which is the equivalent to eighth grade worldwide, trailing countries like Singapore who are among the world's top scorers.

Malaysian 14-year-olds were found to have performed worse than Israel who chalked up 516 points, Lithuania (502) and Lebanon (449), but beat neighbouring Thailand, which scored 427 points on tests by a narrow margin.

In science, Malaysians scored 426 points, tying with Syria and just pipping Palestine, Georgia and Oman, which totted up 420 points each in the tests.

This means Malaysia's ranking in maths fell from 20th in 2007 to 26th last year while its science dropped drastically, from 21st to 32nd in the same period.

The only country which suffered declines in scores in all content and cognitive domains for the two subjects is Jordan.

Malaysia, however, is the worse performer among all countries between 1999 to 2011 with students achieving low percentage points in scoring full credits for what should be basic math and science questions.

BN blamed

DAP national publicity chief Tony Pua said the drop must be blamed on the Barisan Nasional government's national education system.

"This is extremely worrying, a great concern. We are losing quality that is crucial for the country's growth," he told reporters at the party's headquarters here.

Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin pledged for an overhaul with the announcement of a new National Education Blueprint that Putrajaya said would put Malaysia back on the right development path.

But even so, the blueprint only admitted to "some" mistakes while highlighting past achievements now invalidated by the survey.

PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar, speaking at the same press conference, also urged Muhyiddin to explain the disparity between the performance of male and female students with the latter scoring better.

"They cannot keep glossing over when we have a problem like this," she said.

DAP election strategist Dr Ong Kian Ming said the opposition will raise more issues pertaining to the report.

The opposition is expected to issue its own comprehensive response to the matter and is likely to use it as an election issue as key national polls loom.

She went to the kitchen to make sandwiches for the next day's lunches. Rinsed out the popcorn bowls, took meat out of the freezer for supper the following evening, checked the cereal box levels, filled the sugar container, put spoons and bowls on the table and started the coffee pot for brewing the next morning.

She then put some wet clothes in the dryer, put a load of clothes into the washer, ironed a shirt and secured a loose button. She picked up the game pieces left on the table, put the phone back on the charger and put the telephone book into the drawer. She yawned and stretched and headed for the bedroom.

She stopped by the desk and wrote a note to the teacher, counted out some cash for the excursion and pulled a text book out from hiding under the chair. She signed a birthday card for a friend, addressed and stamped the envelope and wrote a quick note for the grocery store. She put both near her bag.

Mum then washed her face with 3 in 1 cleanser, put on her Night Solution & age fighting moisturizer,brushed and flossed her teeth.

Dad called out, "I thought you were going to bed."

"I'm on my way," she said. She put some water into the dog's dish and put the cat outside, then made sure the doors were locked and the patio light was on.. She looked in on each of the kids and turned out their bedside lamps and radios, hung up a shirt, threw some dirty socks into the hamper, and had a brief conversation with the one up still doing homework.

In her own room, she set the alarm; laid out clothing for the next day, straightened up the shoe rack. She added three things to her 6 most important things to do list. She said her prayers, and visualized the accomplishment of her goals.

About that time, Dad turned off the TV and announced to no one in particular. "I'm going to bed." And he did...without another thought.

Anything extraordinary here? Wonder why women live longer...?

'CAUSE THEY ARE MADE FOR THE LONG HAUL.........

(and they can't die sooner, they still have things to do!!!!)

Send this to five phenomenal women today...they' ll love you for it!

And Forward this to as many men as you can so that they know why women are so special :) ..........!

Deepak: Anwar is not behind meKUALA LUMPUR: Carpet dealer Deepak Jaikishan today denied that his recent revelations about Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak and wife Rosmah Mansor were engineered by Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim, saying that his mention of the latter in a video footage was taken out of context.

Speaking to FMT today, he claimed that his detractors cooked up a story from the video footage that showed him mentioning several PKR leaders, including Anwar.

The footage (photo: below) has been widely circulated by pro-Umno bloggers.

"I did not say that I met Anwar," he said.

"What I said and what was written (in the blog) are two different things.

" He challenged the person who recorded the video to release the entire footage and the transcript of what he had said.

Last week, pro-Umno blogger Papa Gomo posted a two-minute clip in which Deepak is seen speaking to a few people off camera.

"So he said I give you the place, whatever you want to do I help you, but you have to help me lah. Of course it is understood lah," said the man in the video.

The video, according to Papa Gomo, was proof that Deepak had met with Anwar before he began his attacks against Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor on Nov 27.

Video take at Umno leader's house

Responding to the allegations, Deepak said he was not working with anybody but was merely "seeking justice" for himself.

"I didn't know Anwar. And Sivarasa only came in for my court case at the last juncture. I never met Anwar in regard to this matter."

The 40-year-old businessman also told FMT that the video was recorded at the house of an Umno supreme council member who, he claimed, had tried to "silence" him.

Without disclosing his name, Deepak claimed that the Umno leader was the one who met him on Nov 30 and asked him not to make any further statement until Umno's annual general assembly was concluded on Dec 1. Deepak had made his first exposé on Nov 28.

He said he was not a member of any political party and that his only interest was business.

He claimed the government had caused a lot of disruption to his business after a land dispute involving him and Umno senator Raja Roopiah Abdullah. -FMT

The Star published an article about durians from elsewhere being passed off as those from Balik Pulau. How does one tell if a durian is really from Balik Pulau and not from Kulim, Bukit Mertajam or Taiping?

Freshly picked Balik Pulau durians.

For most, a durian is a durian is a durian no matter where it is from. However, for the connoisseurs the subtle differences in taste can be very obvious. And Balik Pulau is said to produce the best durians anywhere.

If one has been savouring Balik Pulau durians long enough, one can tell the subtle difference in tastes between an ang heh from Balik Pulau and one from Batu Kurau. The one from Balik Pulau has a stronger pungent odour and a more intense taste that lingers longer in the mouth and hand.

First things first, we need to realise that most of the popular durians like ang heh,khun poh ang and hor lor are no longer harvested from the original trees. There can only be one original tree and from a specific plantation. Due to popularity and demand, they are stem grafted from the original tree or from stems from budding seeds and cultivated in other plantations to increase yield and profit.

These durians may not taste exactly the same as those from the original tree because of soil conditions and other geographical factors. Likewise, durians from other places just do not taste the same like those from Balik Pulau due to those same factors.

The telling characteristics of a specific durian cultivar are the shape, size and colour of the thorns, and the size and shape of the fruit itself. Truth be told, after so many years of savouring Balik Pulau durians, I am still not good at identifying a durian by those characteristics but a durian planter or seller can tell with just a glance which cultivar a durian is from.

The other characteristics to look out for are the shape of the pangsa (the compartments in the fruit that holds the flesh and seed), and colour, texture, taste and aroma of the flesh, and the size of the seed. Each cultivar has a specific colour and taste that is unique.

For example, cheh puay has flesh that is a shade of bright yellow with very creamy, sweet, rich and sticky texture. On the other hand, ang heh has a mild pleasant aroma, not overly sweet and has a smooth texture with hints of pink in the flesh and pangsa that resembles a big prawn, hence its name.

Durians, be they from Balik Pulau or elsewhere, share those same general characteristics. So how do we determine that a Balik Pulau durian as claimed by the durian seller is really from Balik Pulau?

The important fact to remember is that durian season in Balik Pulau usually lasts from June to August. Any durian that is claimed to be from there in other months is probably not genuine.

I remember a story that my cousin Peter recounted. He was at a durian stall selecting durians and asked the seller where those fruits were from.

"Balik Pulau," the guy told him.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes, from Balik Pulau," came the confident reply.

Now, Peter grew up in a durian plantation in Balik Pulau. Our great grandfather cultivated durians. So did our grandfather. Peter's father who is my maternal uncle is still cultivating durians there. And he knew for sure that Balik Pulau durians were out of season then.

So he challenged the durian seller, "Lets go to Balik Pulau. If there's even one single durian on the tree, I'll eat the roots and twigs of that tree."

There was not another peep from the durian seller after that. Peter caught the durian seller red handed but imagine how many unsuspecting customers the seller had cheated and profited from. The only way to ensure that the durian is genuinely Balik Pulau is to personally pick the fruit after it has dropped from the tree. Otherwise, one has to trust the durian seller. That is also the reason why I only get my Balik Pulau durians from the one source that I can trust.